The camerawork was admittedly shaky, but a short documentary called ‘Ulu Bengoh Darom Piin‘ (or ‘Upper Bengoh, underwater’ in one of the Bidayuh languages) that premiered at the Freedom Film Fest on Oct 2, was quite an eye-opener.

Parliament select committee on electoral reform, according to chairman Max Ongkili, will start its public hearing series from 3rd week of November and takes till december to finish all its 6 planned public hearing. Then the PSC will take the remaining 3 months to write its report. The public hearings will cover KL, Northern Penisular, Penisular East Coast, Penisular South and 2 East Malaysian states. Due to the PM’s unwillingness to promise that the recommendations from the PSC will be implemented ahead of the 13th GE the PSC has come under suspicion as a decorative pot plant in Parliament.

The irony of the situation is: Max Ongkili is from a party where they suffer from the unlevel playing fields in Malaysian politics. Can he bring about improvement to the political set up just so his own party would have a better say in the running of the country? Specifically his party PBS was ousted by Malaysian system where hopping Assemblyman does not have to face the voters for approval. 2ndly the voters composition have been altered such that the locals have been overwhelmed by the illegal migrants who had been been approved to be the country’s citizens during the 1990-2000 period under previous PM Mahathir. Could the PSC recommend anything to fix this?